“I think that’s a town, Matt.”

“Are you sure? It’s pretty pointy for a town. I can’t imagine why they’d build like that.” Whether it was a settlement, a town, or a small city, what they were seeing looked more like a conifer forest made out of mud than it did a proper place to live. It was intimidating. It was sharp. If it really was a place demons lived, it was also highly impractical.

“They are demons, Matt. They don’t need to eat people, they just do. I’m guessing they don’t have to lay waste to all the land around here, they just like it that way. They are a bunch of dark edgelords, and I want you to beat them to death with your shovel.”

“That’s pretty intense for you.”

“They eat kids, Matt. They can’t get to the Gaians, but imagine if they could.”

Lucy had picked the right visual if she wanted to get Matt motivated enough to knock some shit down. He had made friends with several of the Gaian children, helping source toys for them and even playing with them a bit. The thought of demons ripping them from their almost entirely lovely families, the kind of fear they’d feel, was enough to get him on board with Lucy’s “fuck up anything you see” bandwagon.

But with that said, that’s a pretty big thing to take down, Matt thought.

“Fine, point taken,” Matt said, “But what’s even our plan? There must be hundreds of demons there. Presumably at least a few pretty tough ones. We don’t really know the lay of the land yet, fighting ability-wise. I don’t want to get in over our head.”

“That’s the beauty of it. We can go figure that stuff out before we fight. Just walk in and check it out, no real risk involved. Demon transformation power, remember?”

They had given the transformation power a go. The description had left out an important detail. More specifically, the skill had a day-long cool down. Otherwise, it worked as described. Matt had turned into a crab-demon, and according to Lucy, he looked just like one.

Lucy continued, “We’ll take a look around, try to find some soft target. If we don’t find any, we figure out a better place to attack. It’s not perfect, but it’s the safest option we have.”

“Well, besides finding some other humans and getting allies.”

“Sure, if we knew where we were, or where they are. Knowing systems, we could be a thousand miles from the nearest human. But the demon town is still the best place to figure out about that, Matt. Suit up already.”

Taking a deep breath, Matt activated the skill, this time opting to look like one of the insect-based demons. Before Matt had put a shovel in him, the drama-teacher wolf had said insects tended not to have very close family bonds. At least this way, he could minimize the chances of running into someone who thought he was their cousin.

They still had a way to go before they got into town, and got down to walking. It was just after dawn, but only a short way into their travel, they started to see more and more traffic on the road leaving the towns. There was plenty of demon-diversity here, including some insect-based monsters, which Matt was glad for. At least he wasn’t going to be the only giant beetle thing in town, drawing unwanted attention.

As they approached the town, it became clearer there was a wall around it. Not a tall one, but more like the block wall you might see around a house, about nine feet from top to bottom. It wouldn’t be enough to stop determined invaders, so Matt figured it was more to help control traffic and trade, if demons even cared about such things. The apparent main entrance to town was a giant gate flanked by four guards, all of whom were some sort of large turtle variant. Matt did his best to look confident as he approached the gate.

“Halt.” One turtle stepped out from the others, blocking Matt’s path. “What is your business here?”

Matt didn’t know what demons even did besides murder and burn things, so he tried to pick something almost any being would need.

“Food,” Matt said, keeping his statement as short and factual as possible. “I’m out of food. Starving. I need to buy more, and other supplies.”

The turtle gestured Matt to come closer with his large spear. “You have coin?” He asked. When Matt said he did, the turtle nodded. “Show me.”

Matt fished his purse out of his bag and held it open for the turtle to see. The guard looked, then deftly hooked one of the gold-colored coins out of the bag. “Call it an entrance fee. We aren’t supposed to be letting people in. The army moved something in last night, we don’t know what, but they are trying to control traffic until they can move it out again. We don’t like it. Cuts down on entrance fees.”

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One of the other turtles huffed a laugh, apparently amused by the frank acknowledgement of their own low-key corruption. “If anyone asks, you got in yesterday. Not today. Yesterday. Got it?”

Matt nodded, then pulled a few silver coins out of his purse and pressed them into the turtle’s hand. “In case I need to leave quickly. You never know.”

The turtle laughed. “No, you never do.” He made a hand motion at another of the guards, who opened the door a crack to allow Matt through. “Enjoy your time here.”

Matt moved through the door, immediately finding himself on a kind of market street. There were meats of various kinds, none of which Matt felt comfortable buying, considering what at least one of them might be. But there were also vegetables, which he bought several mysterious varieties of. And, wonder of wonders, there was salt. To make the day even better, some of the demons sold a limited number of spices. Matt didn’t haggle, which he supposed might be suspicious in its own right, but he had no idea what a good price would even be. Even getting everything he wanted, he only spent about half his coins. And so long as he survived, he had a feeling he’d have a pretty steady supply of money via demon corpses.

After that, he wandered the town. To his relief, there were no children. There was hardly anything that even resembled families. Each house was built tall and spiky, as if single-occupancy homes were the norm. He also figured out how the big spikes themselves were managed. A few of them were broken or worn enough that he could see inside them, and they appeared to be mostly mud binding branches together. The houses themselves weren't much better, about as substantial as structures made out of straw. If this town was completely leveled, he suspected it could be built up again in less than a week. There was nothing permanent-feeling about it, beyond the wall.

The one exception to this was a large building in the center of town made out of stone instead of the usual sticks-and-dirt construction. Compared to everything else in town, it just looked important. That feeling was amplified by the fact that the building was pretty much surrounded by armored troops, most of whom had weapons, and most of whom were from clearly carnivorous and strong-looking animal variations.

“What do you think is in there, Matt?” Lucy was visibly excited, trying to get an angle on the building that might show her any clue to its contents. “The tortoise out front said the military was setting up shop, right? This seems military to me.”

“Turtle.”

“What?”

“The things at the gate. They were turtles. When they have thin shells and webbed feet like that, it’s for swimming. Which makes them turtles.”

“Where are they going to swim around here?”

“That I don’t know. But, yeah, building.” Matt tried his hardest to see a way into the fortress. “I’m guessing if there's something really cool to destroy, it’s gonna be in there. But we probably need to watch for a while. These guys look tougher. I don’t feel like fighting them and an entire town just to find out they were storing handkerchiefs or something.”

After confirming there were no other entrances to the building, they found a nearby alley with a line of sight to the building’s sole door and set up shop. For the most part, the guards didn’t move. When they did change shifts, it was just a few of them at a time, never leaving the door completely unwatched. It was only when the guards were almost completely rotated out that the door finally cracked.

“Is my relief here yet?” A deep voice boomed out of the building from a figure Matt still couldn’t see. “It’s well past the time they should have arrived.” The guards looked confused for a moment, then shook their heads. The door opened the rest of the way, and a large wolf-demon, much larger than the deception teacher had been, stepped out. “Well, I’m going to find them, then. I want you to guard this door closely until I return, and do not enter. Recall how important this project is to the demon lord. The penalties for failure, for all of us, would be severe.”

The guards looked positively spooked by the mention of the demon lord’s personal involvement in the project, nodded, and redoubled their attention on the surrounding streets. The wolf looked over the building one more time, then turned on his heels and left, apparently in search of his missing replacement.

“Well, this looks like a bust. They certainly aren’t going to leave now.”

“No, Lucy, I think we can use this. That was a mistake.”

“How?”

“You’ve never had a bad manager, so you don’t get it. One of the better ways to make people make mistakes or work less hard is to stress them out. Like, yeah, you can get maybe a couple of hard hours of work every time you scare them, but the rest of the time, they start to worry about losing their jobs. They focus in on whatever you scared them about, and make mistakes on everything else.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Just watch.”

If there was one thing that surprised Matt about the town as he walked through it, it was that demons apparently cared about sanitation, at least to some extent. There were public outhouses that appeared relatively clean, and the streets were pretty clear. There were also trash cans. Most were overflowing, but Matt wasn’t here to judge the municipal infrastructure of the demons so much as he was to burn it all down.

Grabbing one of the trash cans, Matt did some quick mental math on trajectories, then gave the can a few practice swings. Curious, Lucy watched as he got set, lifted the can, and then chucked it in a high arc in the direction of the building.

“It’s going to overshoot the whole thing!” Lucy was aghast, but overshooting the building was just what Matt wanted. The can landed not in front of the door and the guards where they could see it, but off to the side of the building where they couldn’t see it. As it landed, it made an unholy crashing noise of metal banging and glass breaking. And, true to stressed-out-employee form, every single one of the jumpy guards immediately forgot the primary purpose of their jobs and went searching for the source of the sound, just in case it was something that could screw them over.

Best of all, Matt already knew the door was unlocked. Nobody had so much as touched a key the whole time. It took most of his stamina bar to do, but he managed to cross the entire space between the alley and the door in less than a second with Spring Fighter. He cracked open the door and slipped through before a single guard had identified the trash can threat and looked at the door again.

Matt and Lucy were in. It was now time to burn some shit down.